Path departure or path dependency at a critical juncture? OECD between resilience and efficiency in the health policy field
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6426236 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Meier (0000-0002-7812-1561, corresponding author), S A Meier (0000-0002-4195-5415, Bielefeld University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 512-534 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Global Social Policy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-0181 • E-ISSN: 1741-2803 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14680181251392126 |
| OpenAlex | W4415788509 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
Crisis opens up opportunities for international organisations (IOs) to change institutional settings, providing a moment for them to make choices to take on a new path or reinforce their original path. This article proposes a new framework for analysing crisis-induced change in IOs’ policy outputs, elaborating on path-departing and path-dependent changes through six sub-types based on the unit of alterations (idea vs policy) and the scope of alterations (moderate vs radical). Deriving from these two dimensions, the framework yields six analytically distinct sub-types: absolute, consistent, and inconsistent variations of path departure and path dependency. Applying this framework, the article evaluates the extent to which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) health policy outputs changed during the COVID-19 crisis. The main finding highlights that, despite the surprising focus shift from the long-lasting call for maximising efficiency to the novel agenda of building resilience, the OECD exhibits consistent path dependency, pointing to moderate changes at both ideational and policy levels. This case study demonstrates that IOs may appear to engage in a path-departing transformation, while substantively maintaining existing paths. By offering a more nuanced typology of crisis-induced variations in IOs’ policy outputs, this article advances the scholarly understanding of institutional continuity and change in global governance
Institutional Change and Globalization
The Advocacy Coalition Framework
Governance and Capacity to Manage Resilience of Health Systems
Analysing Documents
The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism
Can Path Dependence Explain Institutional Change? Two Approaches Applied to Welfare State Reform
How Institutions Evolve
A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change
The Politics of Crisis Management
Soft governance by hard fact? The OECD as a knowledge broker in education policy
Social protection responses by states and international organisations to the Covid-19 crisis in the global South
International organizations as policy actors
International organisations and crisis management
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Preparedness, Crisis Management and Policy Change
Restructuring neoliberalism at the World Health Organization
The Covid-19 crisis
An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein
Governance modes, policy regimes and operational plans
The performance of international organizations
Bureaucratic autonomy of international organizations’ secretariats
Designing Police
Historical Institutionalism in International Relations
Standardizing and disseminating knowledge
International organizations and organizational fields
Case Study Methods in the International Relations Subfield
The Causal Logic of Critical Junctures
The path-dependent design of international organizations
Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State
The Study of Critical Junctures
Understanding Process Tracing
Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics
Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms
| Highly cited | No |
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